Kim Possible: Shadow Wars
by CelendilAU
Summary: The shadow players who orchestrated the first strike against Kim have managed to separate her from her newfound companion and the others who began to gather under her banner. Cornered and pushed into taking desperate steps to survive, Kim doesn't know exactly who she's up against, but she does know this: a war has just begun in the shadows of the world, and she's on the front line.
1. Chapter 1

**Authors Note:** Believe it or not, I am back. It's been a lot longer than originally planned, thanks to a couple of fairly major illnesses that have dragged on the better part of nine months now, through the end of last year and on to this one. That said, thanks to GerbilHunter for the encouragement that helped me get back up on this crazy horse and start again.

Updates probably won't be quite as frequent as last time (unless of course, inspiration strikes), as I'm still working through illness and work, but I do have a solid foundation pre-written and 80% ready to go. I hope you'll join me on the journey, though.

Like the last story, this is rated M. It includes mature themes, violence, character death(s), and sexual content.

 **Standard Disclaimer:** The various characters from the Kim Possible series are all owned by Disney. All registered trade names property of their respective owners. Cheap shots at celebrities constitute fair usage.

* * *

 _Previously, in_ **Kim Possible: Shadow Plays** _:_

 _Gotta… find… Kim_ … Shego thought unsteadily a few moments later, pulling herself upright, and looking into the car, seeing no sign of the redhead, but noticing that the windshield had been smashed - _outwards_ , she realised with a nauseous ball forming in her stomach at the implication.

"KIM!" she screamed.

A faint groan floated back to her, through the ringing in her ears, from further up the road, and Shego blinked in surprise as Kim slowly sat up from where she had been lying on the verge, and she was beyond thankful that she'd insisted Kim keep her battlesuit on underneath her street clothes. The black suit looked torn and scratched, and though it seemed to have activated quickly enough to protect her from catastrophic injury, she guessed Kim was stunned from the impact of hitting the roadside signpost that had folded around her head.

Shego took a desperate half step towards her, forgetting for a moment her broken leg, and she went down screaming again, as the ringing in her ears finally cleared enough for the sound of the helicopter hovering over them to finally penetrate. As she rolled onto her back and looked up, a pair of soldiers in black body armor descended from the helicopter, their guns trained in her direction, but rather than drop on her, they landed on either side of Kim. One bent to pick the unresisting form up into his arms, and suddenly they were lifted back into the sky again.

"NO!" Shego screamed, but she couldn't force herself up anymore, all her strength was gone and and her vision was fading to black again. She only had breath for one final scream. "KIMMIE! NOOOOO!"

 **KP KP KP**

In a dark cavern half the world away a pair of eyes that were normally hazel but were now flaring a bright blue behind the closed lids suddenly snapped open, pouring blue-white light out into the cave.

"Stoppable-san?" a confused man's voice asked.

There was no response for a moment, then a newer blinding flare of brilliant blue light suddenly lit the cave, revealing a beautiful grotto with crystalline stalagmites and stalactites, each outcropping reflecting the new light in a thousand different directions, turning the entire cavern blue with rippling light that flickered and danced.

The source of the new light was a sword which had appeared from out of nowhere, and as it settled slowly into an open hand, blue flames ran joyfully up the sword like waves unleashed from the simple hilt.

"Ron-kun?" a soft, feminine voice asked, then without warning there was a thunderous roaring sound that was vaguely like the cry of a thousand monkeys, and then man holding the sword uttered a single word.

"Kim."

Then he promptly disappeared in another burst of the blinding blue light, and the cave fell back into darkness.

 **KP KP KP**

 _And now, the continuation.._

 **Kim Possible: Shadow Wars.**

The beach was perfect in every way. Peaceful. Idyllic. Serene.

As the girl on the beach woke up and shielded her eyes from the sun, she looked around her.

Blazing white sand met cool azure blue water, the sand stretching for miles in both directions. Little rolls of water were slowly marching up and back down the beach, the rustling of their charge and retreat merging with the noise of the island that lay behind her. The surf, the wind in the leaves of the trees, the cries of the birds circling above, the shuffling of the animals at the edge of the forest, it all formed a veil of distracting white noise that drowned out the occasional momentary flickers of disruption that threatened to break through the peace that surrounded the beach.

Everything was perfect, just like it was supposed to be.

Just like it was every day she woke here on the sand, and every night she went to sleep on it... and so every day she stayed. Sometimes alone… sometimes not. For reasons she couldn't put her finger on, she knew she wasn't alone right now.

"Everything okay, Princess?" a voice came, and she looked to her right.

Her occasional companion had returned from wherever she sometimes vanished to.

A woman strode slowly towards her, swaying her hips side to side, the hypnotic movements sucking in the attention of the girl lying on the sand again, just like they did every time the woman appeared. Her long black hair fluttered lazily in the slight wind as she closed, and the contrast between her alabaster white skin and the the black bikini she wore was highlighted by the sun beating down-

 _\- it should be green her skin should be green this is_ _ **wrong**_ _-_

The girl who had woken looked around again as a tingle went through her, a tingle that said _wrong_ , but that she could not understand. She.. she didn't remember her name, and she didn't know the name of her companion.. she knew that should have scared her, but she felt an overwhelming tiredness settle upon her as she tried to think about it.

 _This. Isn't. Real._

The thought coalesced in her mind just as the other woman flopped down to an oversized beach towel - black and white -

 _it should be black and green this is wrong.. how do I know it should be black and green?_

"Not thinking about leaving me, are you, Princess?" the woman asked with a smile, reaching over and putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. "You're safer here, you know. _I_ won't ever hurt you like she will. I'm the perfect version that only exists in here."

 _In here_?

"That's right, in here. The safe place." The other woman laid back on the towel and stretched out, her flexing proving an immense distraction, but as her words finally registered, the girl understood.

Something was wrong. This wasn't a dream.. this was something else. She was sure of it.

"You're getting so close, Pumpkin. Just a little bit further."

She couldn't even remember her name. But she did suddenly remember the other woman's.

"Sh… Shego?"

The other woman nodded, and sat up slowly.

"I'm sorry about what comes next, Princess. It's not something we - either version of us - wanted for you. But there's something only you can do... and to do it right, you need to see this."

"Shego, what's going on? Why aren't you.."

"Me?" she finished the question with a wry smile. "It's complicated. Ask me about it sometime later.. it's not a pretty subject."

"I don't understand."

"You will, Princess. You will soon, and wish you didn't. Now.. stand back a bit. Like I said, I wish you didn't have to see this, but…"

Before she'd even finished speaking, the instantly familiar green plasma had lit around her hands, but instead of not having any affect on her own skin as usual, the girl watched in horror as the perfect pale skin slowly darkened and eventually cracked open, luminescent green blood oozing from the cracks until the flesh underneath burnt too and started to fall off, slowly dripping to the sand, where it sizzled.

She screamed, but the burning figure of Shego only laughed maniacally as the green grew stronger, racing up her arms and burning more of her away, before it flared brilliantly and encompassed her whole body. In seconds, what had been a beautiful woman was a skeleton surrounded in dancing green flame, with two green orbs for eyes and a rictus grin from the skull.

"What's your name, kid?" the skeleton shouted over the rush of its plasma and the sizzling sound of the burning flesh spread on the ground around it. "You gotta remember that if you wanna wake up."

The overpowering smell of the burning flesh forced its way up her nostrils and triggered her gag reflex, and she took a half dozen steps back from the green pyre in fear as it seemed to rise even higher.

"C'mon, Princess, time's a-wastin! Tell me your name!"

She tried as hard as she could to remember her name, reaching out through every memory she had, but none of them seemed to fit properly, and in a fit of panic, she turned and ran up the beach.

Around her, the day turned to night, and then flickering green raced ahead of her on either side. In the trees it set fire to everything in its path, and the panicked cries of birds and animals alike were cut off by the thunderous explosions of tree trunks exploding as their sap was superheated. Over the ocean, it flash boiled the water and then the steam was itself consumed by the plasma. The close patches of coral on the ground were scorched to carbon, and the sand where water was no longer present was melted into glass.

And yet she ran, as behind her maniacal laughter rang out, followed by a mocking shout.

"It doesn't matter where you run, Red… this is going to happen now. You can't escape this!"

Ahead of her, in the distance, a massive flare of green stopped her in her tracks, shielding her eyes. With growing horror, the green pillar of fire in the distance took a familiar shape - a mushroom cloud - and then she fell to her knees and flash after flash on the horizon sucked all will to run from her and she sank to her knees.

What power was this? What could do this?

"I could, Princess. That's what I'm trying to tell you. You always guessed what I was capable of.. it's going to happen now. I told you, you can't stop this. It's _impossible_."

A hand landed on her shoulder, skeletal and lit with green plasma, but for some reason it didn't hurt her, didn't do anything to her.

The girl on her knees snapped her head up to stare at the green-shrouded skeleton, and the defiant glare in her eyes actually forced it to take a step backwards.

"No, no it's not. Because _I'm Kim Possible."_

The moment she said the words, the beach wavered, then snapped back into focus, it's normal pristine self, and she was lying back on the sand on her side, staring at Shego - green again Shego! - who was lying on her back. As Kim reached a hand out to touch her, Shego's head rolled over to her, and Kim fought the instinctive flinch as she saw the twin green burning orbs that filled the sockets where her eyes should have been.

"Help me, Kimmie. Please! Make them stop hurting me… _Please help me!"_

 **KP KP KP**

* * *

 **A/N:** Soo, a shortish chapter to get back into the swing of things. I hope you enjoyed it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Authors Note:** Okay, so I had a bigger first chapter sort of planned and then it got too long, so I broke it up and teased you with the first bit. Here's part two. I hope you enjoy.

 **Standard Disclaimer:** The various characters from the Kim Possible series are all owned by Disney. All registered trade names property of their respective owners. Cheap shots at celebrities constitute fair usage.

* * *

 **Kim Possible: Shadow Wars**

 **Chapter Two**

Kim Possible awoke with a jolt, a whispered name dying on her lips. Only the rasping dryness of her throat kept the name from slipping out. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she tried to surveil her surrounds - while still trying to comprehend what she'd just… seen? Had dreamed?

 _What happened to... Shego?_

The last thing she remembered was the car, and a flash of green, and… and then the dreams.

The uncomfortable table - because it sure didn't feel like a bed - she was lying on became the first thing she was properly aware of, but it was swiftly followed by the smell of antiseptic that she instinctively associated with a hospital, and that jolted her mind towards a panic that she fought down with a strength that had been missing not that long ago.

Kim had never been comfortable in hospitals, not even to visit relatives or friends who were ill. When she had been a child, just visiting her mom in her office away from the wards had been hard for her. The increasingly frequent trips to hospital as a patient after her website had taken off in an unexpected direction had solidified her dislike - though she was willing to occasionally admit, in moments of self-doubt and reflection while stuck in a hospital, awaiting treatment for her latest injury, that it was the reminder of her own mortality that hospitals tended to inflict that was probably the true cause of her discomfort.

For the girl who could do anything, the reminder that not even _she_ could cheat death forever was profoundly disturbing in an inexpressible way that not even Ron had ever really understood beyond ' _Hospitals bad, sure thing KP_.'

As she fought to control the rising panic, a calm, focused part of her mind noted that the ceiling above her was not the one in Middleton General that she was intimately familiar with - the amount of time she had spent lying on her back being treated for the bruised arms, legs, ribs and back after particularly physical encounters with Shego gave her an _excellent_ memory of that particular ceiling tile - and that led to her to wonder where, exactly, she was.

And again she came back to the car, and the green, and… something had happened. She needed to get up, she needed to move, she needed to find Shego!

She tried to do just that and got nowhere fast, her arms stuck fast in some kind of restraint. She lifted just her head and looked down, and discovered two things - firstly that it wasn't only her arms, but her whole body that was strapped down tightly, and secondly that her head spun viciously from even the slightest movement. The spinning caused enough nausea to bring bile rising all the way to the back of her throat and she swallowed it down quickly before there was any risk of choking on it.

She squeezed her eyes shut tightly for several long moments, until the spinning feeling faded and she felt safe to open them again. This time, she looked around herself slowly - starting on her left, where she found only a blank, almost featureless gray wall with a couple of shelves that appeared empty.

She slowly look over to the right, and found the rest of the room also empty except.. She flinched, as an unfamiliar person was suddenly standing over her.

 _Shego?_ part of her brain wondered.

No. _Not_ Shego. Kim took the woman's face in in a split second. She was eerily similar to Shego - almost like she was related. Kim took in the the same sharp cheekbones and a narrow mouth, a deep surge of confusion welling up within her as she slowly catalogued the differences.

The skin tone was pale white and not green, for starters. The hair, though black, was shorter, and didn't have the faint hint of green to it. By far the biggest difference however was the feeling Km got from looking at her - where Shego almost always exuded a calm confidence that just bordered on arrogance, only a haughty, cold, regal feeling emanated from this woman, and the glare she was shooting down Kim accentuated that initial impression. Her glossy black hair hung loose over her ears and behind her shoulders, and the sharp green eyes were piercing as they scowled down at her.

The glare faded slightly as the woman locked eyes with her. Kim felt herself drawn into some kind of contest of will without even meaning to be - the gaze was impossible to look away from.

Her mind raced. She was in an unknown location with an unknown person - and she was strapped down. Everything about this situation was _screaming_ bad news in a hundred different languages, but that calm in Kim's mind that had been absent for a period of time was back, analyzing the room instinctively, trying to find any advantage that would lead to any kind of way out.

All of her training - and more than a little practical experience - kicked in at the same instant the new wave of fear arrived. She crushed the latter down ruthlessly. This wasn't the time to be afraid. This was the time to be _Kim Possible._

Something must have changed in her expression, because the face of the woman above her suddenly shifted from the cold glare to an equally cold but slightly less forbidding smile.

"Well well, you're awake! You were supposed to be out longer-"

If she were in a supervillain's lair, the woman would be winding into a rant, and this might be Kim's only opportunity to escape. She took two quick deep breaths to prepare herself for action - she would definitely only get one shot at this.

As the woman leaned over and started to adjust the straps holding down one of her arms, Kim waited until the perfect moment and struck, slamming her right arm up, breaking through the buckle with sheer strength and grabbing at the woman's throat, trying to pull her down by surprise then slide around the neck into a headlock before her captor could react.

 _That_ plan went straight out the window when the woman slapped her arm away with a windmilling arm that tapped her wrist near perfectly to deflect it. Kim went to a new plan on the fly, and snapped her arm back to grab the woman's still circling wrist, aiming for a wrist lock, only to miss as the woman evaded the grab, but that left her facing away from Kim and the table, close enough for Kim to grab and pull an elbow hard towards her, slamming the woman's full weight down on her and the bed she was on. She felt her opponent's head smack into her own, the crunching sound of bone on bone enough to rattle her, but she'd initiated the contact and had angled her head to hit with the hardest part of her skull.

The impact stunned her captor momentarily and Kim scrambled to take advantage. Before the woman could recover, Kim had slipped her one free arm around the throat and clenched tight enough to ensure she had enough control to hold her, tucking her free fist as tight towards her own neck as she could.

"Where am I? Who are you?" she demanded in a dry, cracked voice.

"Damnit, you idiot girl, let me go!" the woman growled, slamming her free fist against Kim's leg until stiffening as Kim tightened the grip, bicep pressing hard against the carotid arteries on one side of the neck. "Stop it, or I'll alert the guards!" she choked out.

Kim's annoyance resulted in her arm squeezing tighter still, eliciting a muffled groan of complaint. "You do that, and I discover if I can snap necks one armed," Kim bluffed. "Answer my questions! Who are you? Where. Am. I?"

The woman tried to wriggle her way out of the headlock for a second, then gave up, Kim's arm strength not allowing her to gain any real leverage. She sighed and gave up struggling, but Kim didn't slacken her grip at all, sensing she was waiting for the slightest relaxation to use as an opportunity to escape.

Finally, after another tense minute, the woman gave up for real. "Oh for the love of…" she grated out. "Where do you think you are? You're in a base owned by one of the groups of people that has been hunting you, and we're both completely screwed here unless you let me go, and cooperate with my plan to break us both out of here."

 _Groups? One of?_ Kim felt her arm twitch again without intending to do it, and the woman stilled again.

"Look," she said carefully. "I've been doctoring the dosage on the anesthetic, trying to keep you under.. you'd never have stayed asleep this long otherwise."

Kim frowned. Her question hadn't really been answered and the half answer had generated maybe six or seven more questions. The biggest one, though, was obvious.

"Why should I trust you? You just admitted to drugging me," she pointed out.

"Mostly because I'm the only opportunity you've got if you ever want to make it out of this facility alive."

That was _possibly_ a fair point but Kim didn't have any way to judge the truth of it yet. And she would still rate her chances fairly highly solo. If she did manage to subdue her current captive, she would bank on being able to get up and out of the rest of the restraints, and from there make an escape.

Getting out solo with an alerted enemy looking for her might be a tad harder, though.

"Look, I was _going_ to get you free, I swear. You're no used to me tied down like this. Can I loosen the straps on the rest of you and take out the IV line so you can get up? I'm going to need an inch of reach."

Kim thought about it, weighed the pros and cons for a second, then allowed the woman the room she had asked for. A moment later she felt the pull of a needle leaving her arm and then the straps on that arm were released, quickly followed by the ones around her upper torso.

 _Someone had me seriously trussed up_ , Kim realized. As the last strap on her torso came undone, Kim decided a measure of trust had been earned, and let go of the woman completely.

"Ugh, thank you. You have a hell of a grip for a small..." the woman admitted grudgingly, backing away and straightening up, rubbing one hand on her throat, which was a pronounced red color. "Word of advice, give yourself a minute to get used to being awake again before you go for the leg straps. Fentanyl is powerful stuff and you've had a lot of it in your system."

The woman turned away towards the far corner of the room, muttering to herself. As Kim watched her go, she noted that even her _walk_ seemed to remind her of Shego.

 _I think I have a certain green woman on the brain_ , Kim thought, a mild blush rising to her cheeks.

"Like I said before, you should still be mostly asleep," the woman said suddenly, spinning around to point an accusing finger at Kim. "I don't understand how you woke up a week early - it shouldn't be _possible_ , I calculated the dosages for your weight perfectly."

Kim smiled wanly as she undid the straps on her legs, familiar with that complaint at least. "You didn't have my medical history handy, did you? I'm highly resistant to most anesthetics - I need far more than the normal dose."

The other woman narrowed her eyes. "How…?"

"Lots of accidents as a child, more as a teen, and then fighting super villains and saving the world for a few years," she sighed. "It all adds up, Doctor…?"

"Oh, I'm no doctor. I'm just... Lawson."

"Justine Lawson?" Kim asked.

"No, _just_ Lawson," the woman replied. "I'm not even supposed to use that name."

Kim batted the confusion aside. "Oh. I see. You already know who I am," she noted.

"Yes, I know who you are." The tone of voice was nonplussed and Kim wondered at it, but as no further information was forthcoming she decided to dig for it.

"So.. I'm awake earlier than you planned?" she asked. "And you did claim to have an escape plan of some sort… what was it?"

Lawson heaved a sigh and looked at her for a long second before sinking into the chair at the desk she'd walked over to, tapping at a keyboard in front of her.

"We get supplies here every few weeks. They come in via lots of crates that get scanned for security, but we also offload trash via those same crates - and they _don't_ get scanned. The old plan..."

"Was to send me out in one of the crates, probably still unconscious… in a week?" Kim guessed. _Risky for everyone involved,_ Kim thought. Someone unconscious and in a crate, unable to properly control their own breathing, could die very easily. _Kind of glad we aren't going with that plan._

Lawson had nodded her head in confirmation.

"You were going out with me?" Kim added, as she eased herself onto her feet carefully, wondering why she felt so weak and unfit, almost like she was back after the surgeries post.. That incident.

Lawson shook her head. "No. Someone - anyone - vanishes from here at the same time you do, it's curtains for them and a _lot_ of other people. Management here are.. not the forgiving types."

"I could protect you." _Good old impulsive Kim, that hasn't ever gotten you into trouble, has it?_ Like it had before, her inner voice held a trace of Shego.

The other woman snorted. "You ought to worry about protecting _yourself_ more. After all, which of us ended up here by choice?" Kim scowled at Lawson, who took no notice of the redhead's ire. "Now be quiet, I am trying to think of a new way out that doesn't get us _all_ killed."

Kim wondered for a second who _all_ was, but she did as she was told. First, she checked over the grey, cotton tracksuit she was wearing, a brief blush rising to her cheeks as she wondered who had put it on her - and a moment of panic struck her as she wondered what they'd done to Wade's battlesuit. She looked around, wondering naively if it was still in the room with her, her brain cataloging the room instinctively until it came to a large security camera in one corner.

She chided herself for not having seen it already - _sloppy_ , came Shego's voice again in the back of her head.

"Sorry to interrupt again, but aren't security going to notice that I'm no longer Sleeping Beauty?" she asked, nodding at the camera.

Lawson looked up and laughed, though it was devoid of any humor. "Hah, Sleeping Beauty? That's a good one, have to remember that... No, we're fine. A friend took care of looping some footage and inserting it on all the security systems. Since all you were doing was breathing at the time, it looks pretty convincing." The raven haired woman went back to her typing on the computer.

Kim nodded. "One more question, and then I promise I'll be quiet again."

Lawson looked up at her expectantly.

"How long was I under?"

The woman's face was suddenly distant and totally unreadable. "This isn't going to be easy to take… but you did ask." She stopped and looked her in the eyes. "I don't know exactly how long you were out before you got here, but you've been unconscious here in _this_ facility for eight weeks."

 **KP KP KP**

Kim sat down heavily on the edge of the bed again as the number started to process.

"Eight… eight weeks?" It didn't make sense. She couldn't have been out for eight weeks. That wasn't…

 _There's that stupid word again,_ part of her brain said. _You know it's_ very _possible._

 _But… why hasn't Shego found me?_ Another part asked. _She would have looked…_

 _If she's still alive_ , the first part countered.

"Why am I here? Why did you keep me asleep, really?" she demanded, mostly in an effort to stop her brain arguing with itself.

"You are _not_ ready for those answers," Lawson told her flatly. "You're not ready for _any_ answers. And even if I thought you _were_ , right now isn't the time to be thinking about-"

"I need to know the truth," Kim growled. "Where I am. Who has me. What they want with me. It's all important to know."

"Why?"

Kim pushed herself to her feet and flexed her arms and clenched her fists. "So I can figure out a way out."

Lawson gave her a long look, then burst into mocking laughter. "Good one," she crowed. "You really think you can just break out of a facility that in it's entire existence has never even been revealed to the outside world, let alone escaped from? _Nobody_ leaves, Possible. Get used to that. People can enter hell, but they never.. get.. out."

Lawson punctuated the last three words by slapping her hand on the desk.

Kim felt her heart drop slightly at the possibility, then refused to be deterred by the negativity. "You were going to break me out," she pointed out.

"Yes, but that's because, first of all, I'm brilliant.." Kim had to work hard to suppress a snort at that declaration. "...and secondly, I know the inside of the facility like the back of my own hand, and third of all, I've been here long enough to get away with far more than most people. You, on the other hand, are a known entity, instantly recognizable, and unlikely to escape notice _anywhere_ outside of this room for longer than thirty seconds. So get it through your thick head: I'm going to figure a way out of here. You're going to sit there and wait, or I'm going to put you back under again."

"Not a chance," Kim retorted. "I might have been unconscious when you started feeding me drugs, but you'll never get me down long enough to get me back under again."

Lawson looked up at her, a grim smile on her face. "You sure about that? You don't have any idea what I might be able to do, and I'd be willing to bet now that we're on even footing, I can probably hold my own. Or better yet, I could just call the guards and have them take care of you."

Kim smiled. "You won't do that."

"I won't? And why not?"

"Because you were keeping me under for a reason. You said that supplies come in every few weeks, so why wait and leave me for eight weeks? There's something _they_ want with me, and it's something you're trying to take advantage of, isn't it? That's why you're still trying to get me out of here even if plan A isn't an option any more."

A momentary flicker of… something… passed Lawson's face, long enough for Kim to be convinced she was right - or at least, partially right - and the other woman slowly rose to her feet again.

"Alright, so what if there is. How exactly, do _you_ propose to get out? To get through all the security forces stationed here, not to mention the automatic turret defenses? Then to get from the exit - if you can find it - back to civilization?"

Kim felt her lips twist a familiar smirk. "I'll just hit anyone or anything that gets in my way until they're no longer in my way. Finding the exit, I figure you'll help with, out of enlightened self interest, if nothing else. The returning to civilization bit… I have a plan for that, it just requires access to a communications dish of some sort."

Lawson rolled her eyes. "Christ, you're every bit as bad as I thought you'd be. Not even going to bother considering the use of a distraction…" She trailed off as an alarm klaxon screamed around them, then dashed back over to the desk and tapped at her computer. She looked up in surprise. "What the hell? The surface part of the facility is under attack?"

"That sounds like a distraction to me," Kim said, stepping towards the door. "Coming?"

Before she got three steps, Lawson slipped in front of her. "You go out there before you're ready, and you're _dead_ , Possible. I'm not kidding. Whoever's attacking this facility, _they_ probably want you just as dead as everyone else. You need a _plan_ that's better than 'punch everyone'."

"Why? It usually works."

"Sure, on idiots like _Drakken_ ," Lawson said sarcastically, proving she was at least knowledgeable about _some_ of Kim's history. "In case you hadn't noticed, the people that you've been dealing with lately are a step up. A _big_ step up."

Kim kind of had noticed that, but she and Shego hadn't really talked about it because between the two of them, they'd handled anything…

 _Shego_. All of a sudden, her eyes widened. _How must she be feeling, if she's been looking for me for eight weeks?_ Kim wondered. _What would she do if I died trying to get out of here?_

A part of the dreams came back - the nuclear explosions, green in color, annihilating everything they touched and ending the world.

That was what would happen. Shego would burn the world.

She'd even said so herself, once upon a time.

 _Okay, think, Possible. How best to play this?_

"Okay, Lawson. You want a plan. How's this?" The woman folded her arms across her chest and looked expectantly at her. "We need to head to the nearest barracks or armory. We find weapons, and armor or a uniform, whatever the local guards use. We pose as guards, heading to a secure section. Since you're supposedly so familiar with the place, I'm assuming you could fake a location and say we were on special detachment to guard it?"

Lawson nodded slowly. "And if the attackers are successful and this facility is taken?"

"I figure by that point we'll have found a convenient hiding spot," Kim said, thinking of the vents that had to supply air to the facility, since it was underground - Lawson had said ' _surface part of the facility_ '. "Or we ditch the uniforms and act like prisoners breaking out - if they seem like the type willing to rescue us."

"Oh, they might be willing to rescue us alright, just to use us in their own experimental facilities," Lawson muttered.

"Which is fine, we'll just break out during transportation to wherever they want to make our new home. Easiest time for us to do it, hardest for them to maintain a strong detail on us. Plus we get a free ride out of here with it."

Lawson shrugged after considering it for a second. "I'm surprised. It's not the worst plan I've ever heard, and it has the advantage of flexibility.."

She trailed off as Kim hit the ground, pulling her down at the same time, and a beam of coherent energy slammed into the far wall, shattering the tiles in a spiderweb pattern out from the center of impact.

"I forgot to mention, they might have had a 'Kill Kim if the facility is compromised' contingency plan of their own," Lawson said with a sarcastic grin.

"You don't say," Kim growled back, before leaping back to her feet and hand-springing over the table that had been her bed and prison for six weeks. A small squad - five men - were peering into the room, four holding their positions outside the doorway with a level of discipline that spoke well to their training - but one had entered to scan the room closely, and that gave Kim a bit more freedom in her choices to deal with them.

As she went over the bed - more a gurney than a bed, she saw in an odd moment of clarity - she grabbed one of the large straps that had been around her chest, and pulled, the force enough to rip it free as she continued into a tuck roll that took her closer to the door, turning it into an improvised whip that she lashed out with at the guard inside the door before any of the others could react.

The buckle smacked into his hand around his knuckles with an audible ' _crack_ ' of bones breaking, and he dropped his gun - some kind of directed energy device, she saw - to the floor, clutching the shattered hand to his chest. Kim grinned, and flicked the improvised whip a second time, this time letting go as it traveled, the buckle flying true and slamming into the head of a second guard and stunning him momentarily.

A body slammed into her and threw her to the ground, as another burst of blue-white energy passed just above her for half a second.

Lawson rolled to the side, then crab walked to the door, eased a small spherical device to the ground and rolled it around the corner. Half second later, the detonation of the small flash grenade lit the room and the report echoed in the enclosed space.

The two women were up and moving together, and Kim felt more than saw Lawson launch into a tumble that took her through the door and halfway up one wall. As Kim herself dove through the door low and tucked and rolled, she felt Lawson came down in a blur with legs lashing out and fists slamming into faces, and two of the three remaining guards were falling, even as Kim took the legs of the last out and finished him with a kick to his face as he fell.

Lawson rolled her shoulders easily, and for the first time, Kim recognized the _styles_ that she was using - an easy command of Krav Maga mixed with the exotic elements of eskrima that were usually paired with a pair of…

Lawson pulled a baton of some kind from two of the troopers and spun them, raising her eyebrows at Kim's contemplative look.

"What?"

"You're definitely no ordinary nurse or orderly," she observed, tugging one free from the remaining guard for herself.

"And you're no ordinary patient. Are we going to stand here all day and let them catch us and kill us?"

Kim looked at the guards, sizing their uniforms quickly. "None of these guys are close to the right sizes for us to use… are there any female guards?"

Lawson nodded, sliding the two batons into her pockets, before grabbing one of the soldier's legs and dragging him back into the room they'd come from. "There'll be uniforms in the barracks. Come on, we should hide these away first. It might give us a little more time, at least."

Kim nodded, and together they moved the four unconscious and one whimpering - then quickly also unconscious - guards into the room then locked the door. Around them, the wailing of an alert tone continued. Lawson pulled a tablet from another guard's pocket and examined it briefly.

"Still no idea what the alert is about. I almost suspect it was a drill, but the way those guys reacted suggests not."

"Do you have any access to a signal transmitter from that? One that can't be easily shut down?"

"I doubt it, but I can find out. If not, we can probably hack the main comm link from the guard station."

"Okay, when you get access, set it to send regular half second pulses, ten seconds apart, on the following frequency," Kim said, before reciting a number from memory. "No data, just pings. It'll be picked up."

"And someone's going to be listening on the Hydrogen line?" Lawson asked curiously.

Kim grinned. "A lot of people. But there's one in particular that'll be looking for pings at that wavelength from terrestrial origins." She dusted her hands against the grey tracksuit. "So what's the route?"

Lawson tapped a few times. "Follow me, and keep up," she said, and set off down the corridor.

Kim bit back the snarky retort that rose to her lips, and followed, matching the rapid pace of the intriguing woman.

* * *

 **A/N:** Well, first bit of true action for the sequel. Promise there's _plenty_ more where that came from coming up soon.


	3. Chapter 3

**Authors Note:** Hello again, welcome, welcome! Chapter Three of Shadow Wars, checking in. Apologies for the delay, I am still battling illness, but never fear, I am finding that writing is particularly good for taking the mind off of everything else, at least for a short while. This chapter is slightly shorter than my preferred chapter length, but merging it with what comes next made it way too long, so I cut my losses and ended it here. Chapter Four polish is in progress now, and.. well, you'll just have to wait. I hope you're still enjoying the story.

 **Edit:** My apologies, I was so tired when I uploaded the chapter this evening, I put it on the wrong story. I think I noticed quick enough to avoid spamming people with email notifications?

 **Standard Disclaimer:** The various characters from the Kim Possible series are all owned by Disney. All registered trade names property of their respective owners. Cheap shots at celebrities constitute fair usage.

* * *

 **Kim Possible: Shadow Wars**

 **Chapter Three**

On the rocky edge of a cliff, a dejected figure in what resembled a blue hospital gown that clashed horribly with her skin color sat dangling her legs over the edge of the sheer face, staring at the storm-whipped waves pounding into the base of the cliff several hundred meters below her, trying desperately to shut out the voices that rattled through her mind.

The voices whispered many words, but the most common ones Shego had heard in the past weeks tended to follow a fairly predictable pattern.

 _Fraud. Loser. Weak. Failure._

Along with one more, one that left her feeling more broken than all the others.

 _ **Coward**_ _._

The voices had become so loud in the quiet spaces she'd been forcibly enclosed in for the past several weeks that she'd finally broken out and tried to lose herself in the surrounds of the facility. While it had the unexpected side effect of annoying her captors, it hadn't really helped quiet the voices, no matter how loud a place she found, so she'd taken to venturing farther and farther every day out into the cold air to find at least one place she could hide away from her inner thoughts - and where she wouldn't have to see the pitying looks that the others around her tried but failed to hide.

She had travelled farther than any other trip that morning only to discover to her disgust that while the roaring of the ocean hitting far below was immense, even the brutal power of natures fury was not loud enough to drown out the voices that had been tormenting her for weeks.

And then there was the other problem with escaping the facility...

"Go away," she said suddenly, not bothering to look around.

The person to whom she was speaking appeared from out of nowhere, shaking a black covered head slowly. "Most people can't.."

"When have I _ever_ been most people?" Shego interjected, recognising the voice but suppressing any surprise she might have felt from showing. "And what I actually said was, ' _go away'_ , not 'stop by uninvited and chat'. Do I need to repeat it? Perhaps with some reinforcement?"

A few months ago, the threat at the end would have been accompanied by something more, but here, now, it was as weak as the shaking, shivering body that was yet again betraying her.

The figure reached up and pulled back the black hood of the shozoku he wore, revealing a shock of sandy blonde hair and a pale, freckled face.

"We'll find her, Shego," Ron Stoppable said somberly. "I know it's been… too long, but Wade is the best at what he does, and you know Kim, she'll…"

He trailed off as she ignored him steadfastly, eyes locked on the horizon where an oncoming storm flashed with massive forked bolts of lightning, ignoring the bitter tears that formed in her traitorous eyes and started to fall down her cheeks.

"She's not dead," he said eventually, and her head whipped around at him, a tear or two falling from her cheeks and into the maelstrom below, swallowed by seemingly infinite ocean.

" _What_?" she hissed.

"I said she's not dead. I would have known if… if that had happened to her."

"You would have felt it," Shego said sarcastically, the back of a hand eventually rising to her face to rub angrily at her eyes.

"Yes."

There was a long pause and the roaring of the ocean below couldn't quite fill it totally as question after question filled her mind, questions she refused to speak aloud and give power to.

"Kim and I were best friends for more than a decade, Shego, long before I gained this... this power," Ron said eventually, realising she would never ask and he would have to answer unprompted. "When I first acquired it, I was able to sense her moods, more than anything. Not thoughts… just feelings. And if she was really in trouble, or needed my help, I knew it, I could sense what I had to do to help. For a while, it was so random that I didn't know exactly _what_ it was but after... I've learned how to focus it, how to _control_ it. When I felt she was in trouble in Sydney, after all those months on the run, I almost went to her…"

"Why didn't you?" Shego asked harshly.

"Sensei told me not to," he said evenly.

"What?" She was aware her mouth was gaping slightly, but she couldn't seem to close it. "Why?"

"He told me that he had seen someone else finding her, and healing her, and protecting her, and that my role in the future was not yet clear."

Shego blinked. In some way, it sounded plausible enough. She _had_ found Kim, she _had_ healed her - mostly… but the future?

"He saw all that?" she asked, still skeptical.

"He saw more.. but he didn't tell me more until I was ready to hear."

"Ready to hear what?"

He looked up again, looked directly at her. "Do you love her?"

"It's not that simple."

"Sure it is. _Do you love her_?"

Shego blinked, but she was forced to hold his gaze for a long moment, as blue flecks danced in his brown eyes. She shivered again despite herself, and could almost _feel_ the power emanating off of him, the full weight of it brought to bear against her mind somehow. The effect was almost suffocating..

"Yeeess.. get out of my HEAD!" she ground out.

He blinked, and suddenly his eyes were brown again, and then he too turned to stare at the ocean. The pressure was gone from her head, but she was left gasping for breath, scowling furiously at him, her hands clenched tight into fists at her side.

"What the hell was that? Don't you _ever_ do that to me again!" she demanded, a momentary flicker of green forming unnoticed around her hands as the anger that raged inside her threatened to spill over until she fought to push it down.

"I'm sorry. But.. I was worried about her already, and when I realised it was _your_ screams that I'd heard when I was meditating, _you_ screaming _her_ name.. things suddenly made sense. The training, the preparation, Sensei keeping me from her. Everything was a bit hectic and confused when I got to you, she was gone, you were unconscious, I had to wait for Yamanouchi to organise a medical transport for you... I just haven't really had a chance to properly talk to you yet.." He trailed off from his million-mile-an-hour delivery and shrugged, looking once again like nothing more than the confused teenaged sidekick he'd always been to her. "It's just kinda weird to find out that your ex is dating a supervillain from her rogues gallery, y'know?"

Shego's anger collapsed back in on itself, exhausted, much like she felt. " _Ex-_ supervillain, thank you. I'm retired. And I _really_ wouldn't call it dating, Stoppable," she muttered, then huffed a deep sigh.

"It was more like... six months of nursing a stubborn pain-in-my-ass back to something _resembling_ full health, seeing her suffer a near nervous breakdown after watching the assassination of a fake copy of herself.. and then when she'd barely recovered from _that_ , having to chase after her and keep her safe from her own idiotic need to be a _goddamned hero_ … and failing." She shrugged helplessly. "I couldn't save her from herself, let alone her enemies."

"Well, you knew what she could be like," Ron finally said, a knowing tone to his voice "Does _she_ love _you_?" he asked after another pause.

"I think she thinks she does, but… it's been six months, and it hasn't exactly been.." She trailed off. "It's just.. maybe she's just grateful for someone having picked her out of the gutter, and she's latched on to me as the first person to show her kindness and give her comfort for a while…"

She looked at him again. "Why the hell am I even telling _you_ of all people this?"

He looked at her, and she felt another shiver go through her.

"What are you so afraid of, Shego? You already know the truth."

"I'm not afraid of anything!" she insisted hotly, pointedly ignoring the second thing he'd said, but his patient look eventually had her staring down at her hands, now folded passively in her lap, blushing slightly.

"Oh, really?" was all he said.

The silence that followed dragged out until she couldn't stand it any more, the roiling feelings inside her bursting to the surface again..

"Okay, fine, I _am_ afraid. I'm afraid of me, I'm afraid of you, and... yeah, I'm afraid of Kim, afraid of her crushing me," she said, trailing off into a soft whisper at the end of her outburst.

"Me?" Ron inquired, and she looked over at him to find a surprised look on his face. " _You're_ afraid of _me_?"

 _So not the takeaway from that I expected,_ a part of her brain said, sounding far more like a certain redhead than her own sarcastic voice. _Sheesh, ego much?_

"Not _you_ , so much, as you when you forget who you are," Shego clarified, a ghost of a smile touching her lips. "I _saw_ what you did in Middleton, remember, and I _heard_ what you did in Tokyo."

His eyes narrowed, and she flinched instinctively at the specks of blue that again appeared in them. As soon as he recognised the cause of her flinch, Ron turned his head back to the ocean crashing below them and breathed deeply for a minute, the air around them calming as much as the oncoming storm would allow.

"What happened in Tokyo is.. Obviously hard for me to talk about, even after the time that has passed," he said hesitantly after a minute. "I'm not sure what you were told.."

"Kim told me some," she started, and saw Ron wince slightly. "Dr Director told me more, that it wasn't a gas leak like the official story said.. she said you caused that building to come down.."

He nodded. "She is... right. I suspect even _she_ got a sanitised version."

" _Sanitised_?" she asked. _What on earth happened up there?_ She wondered briefly, before trying to squash down the errant curiosity before it got the better of her.

Ron sighed, and joined her on the ledge, his feet swinging out into the air a few times, before he turned to her.

 _Looks like I get to find out anyway._

"I arrived at Nakasumi HQ after Kim had already left, but Wade couldn't tell me to abort my landing on that roof because of the jamming on my Roncom," he said. "As a result, I had no idea that I was walking into a trap set by a, uhh, former member of my school. After I landed on the roof, I fell almost instantly into Fukushima's trap. He had several dozen Yakuza henchmen, and two ninja who I recognised - one was the Sumo who worked with you and Drakken."

"Ozu! How is he?"

"Dead," Ron said regretfully.

Shego flushed. _Goddamnit, you idiot,_ she cursed inwardly.

"They had a hostage, on the roof, when I landed…" Ron said softly. "They kept her face obscured, but the red hair was visible. They threatened to kill her unless I surrendered immediately."

"Oh.. god," Shego whispered.

"I figured if I could just break Kim free, we could fight them off together," Ron continued, lost in the memory. He shuddered. "I got most of the way there before Fukushima buried two ninja stars in her throat. She tried to scream.. she.. She just gurgled… I saw _blue_ , Shego, and I.."

He paused for a second to find his voice again. "I didn't find out until a _long_ time later that Fukushima wasn't operating alone, he'd been hired by.. certain elements within the Japanese government, who wanted to acquire my abilities.. and had devised a plan to provide Fukushima with a convincing double of Kim to use as leverage against me.. unfortunately for everyone, he went off script and killed her in an attempt to weaken me, so as to kill me and take the Monkey Power for himself. He only succeeded in sending me to a very dark, very angry place I hope I never _ever_ see again in this lifetime."

Ron let go a shuddering breath. "He taunted me for failing to save her, and then I fought him and the ninjas, and.. I unleashed something I'd only ever done once before and the power of it brought the building down." He looked over at her, and Shego was surprised to see tears in his eyes. "Three hundred and ninety seven, Shego. Three hundred and ninety seven people died, including the girl - her name was Omiko - her, and Fukushima, and Ozu, and all the others in and around that building, they all died because I wasn't able to control my rage."

Shego knew what he was talking about on a level few other people would ever be able to.

"When I emerged from the rubble… and I saw Kim… I had thought she was _dead_ , Shego! I thought Fukushima had killed her and.. then I saw her, and she looked at me like I was a monster, and she ran from me.. and while a part of me wanted to chase her, to grab her and make her understand, another part was afraid that I _was_ the monster she saw, and that I would never.."

He trailed off and looked out over the city. "Yamanouchi found me wandering the streets of Tokyo in a fugue state a few hours later. Sensei had felt the MMP use from the school, and feared that he knew what it meant. They coaxed me back to the school, and then they gave me the time and space I needed to grieve and mourn for the boy whose innocence died on that rooftop, and then, when I was ready, they began my training to control it, to ensure that it never happens again."

He trailed off into another silence that nature did its best to fill. Around them, the wind began to whip up once more and add its noise to that of the ocean below.

"It might surprise you to know that I decided to learn how to fight _after_ the.. uh.. After things changed for us," Shego said eventually. "Before then, I wasn't really the fighting kind. I mean, I might have been quick with my tongue, but it was usually to get other people doing the fighting - for me, over me, it didn't matter. When Hego decided that we had been given our powers for a _reason_ and started his stupid crusade, he decided we needed to learn how to take care of myself, even with the advantages we had suddenly acquired."

She paused, and tilted her head to the side. "I met with several schools in Go City, but nobody really seemed to fit.. but we had enough money from... from other sources... that I could afford to visit Asia for a few weeks. A representative of Yamanouchi introduced herself to me not long after I visited a rival school and invited me to see their facilities.." She gave a small laugh. "I quite liked them, and I liked Sensei. He asked me to train with them, to stay and learn Monkey Kung Fu."

"You actually met Sensei?" Ron said, blinking in surprise. "Why didn't you stay?"

" _Hego_." A deep hatred dripped from that single word, and she shivered at how much effort it took to control it, lock it back away safely, before she continued. "Everything comes back to him. Hego changed his mind, decided he didn't want me off by myself in a foreign country, learning "different" things - he was afraid if I learnt how to fight too well, it would make me too dangerous - but of course he covered it up by claiming that we had to stick together, for our safety."

She scowled, and her eyes were locked on the horizon as she shuddered through the still roiling emotions deep within her.

"I was barely fifteen, and he preyed on how protective I was of the twins… like an _idiot_ I trusted him to know best, and I made my apologies to Sensei, went back to Go City, and I played along in the team, just like he wanted me to. I was the good little hero, fought the women he couldn't bring himself to hit, but it was _dangerous_ and I don't think he ever really understood how hard I tried... until it all fell apart."

She let a ragged breath go. "Like you did, I got into a situation that I didn't have the training to handle, and like you, in response I did something I'll probably regret for the rest of my life. Hego pretty much banished me for it, without even giving me a chance to explain."

"You went back to Yamanouchi, didn't you." Ron didn't phrase it as a question.

"I did.. But Sensei refused to train me. He said that I 'had taken too many steps down a path that would lead me only to solitude and sadness', and that he would not aid me any further along it.. he would have made Yoda proud," she said. "So I left, I found other masters with less… ethical objections to the use of power, as it were… and I learned from them until I felt I knew enough. From there I ended up wandering the world on my own, stealing and fighting, finding other pursuits to pass the time… until I found Drakken. Or he found me. I've never really been entirely clear on which way it happened."

She paused and cocked her head to one side. "Why am I telling _you_ all of this, of all people? We were talking about you, about _Tokyo_."

"I was trying to avoid it. And it seems like you needed to vent a bit..."

Shego pulled her legs up from over the edge, onto the rock they were both sitting on, then shuffled herself sideways until she was in touching distance and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"I guess I just wanted to say… we might be more alike than you think," she said softly. "And _that's_ why I'm afraid of me."

Ron looked at her, his eyes conveying shock at the voluntary contact, and she retrieved her hand slowly.

"Twice, in two days, first in Sydney when they ambushed us, and then again when they were pulling her up and away from me and I couldn't do anything, I felt.. I felt a rage in me.. A rage I've kept pent up and bottled away for so many years that I'd almost forgotten what it was like. I was so injured and so exhausted from everything that had happened in the last week that I couldn't hold it back any more... if you hadn't... I don't know what I might have done."

She trailed off again and looked away into the distance.

"Yeah," he said. "You're worried that you're still capable of losing control. Of being the Demon of Go City again."

Her head shot around, and she glared at him. " _How did you know about that_?"

"You think _Sensei_ didn't know everything that had happened in Go City? Did you think he wouldn't prepare me for the possibility - pardon the pun - that at some point in the future I might run into _that_ version of you, and I might need to fight you? He knew that we had tangled before, Kim and I, but until he told me more…" He trailed off, then looked back at her..

"I never realized he'd actually met you in person, but it does explain a lot," he said. "You should know, he's been seeing visions of you, and Kim, and they're not exactly pleasant... but Shego, what happened all those years ago… I don't think it was as much your fault as you think it was."

"I… no, it _was_ my fault. I put myself in that position, and I got those people killed.. and then I spent weeks killing _more_ people to avenge them in a haze of anger and vengeance... and all it got me was banished from Team Go, and a one way ticket to…"

He bowed his head and stared at his lap. "Does Kim know?"

"No.. _god no_.." Shego breathed.

"But you've been looking after her since... ahh. That's the part of you that's afraid of her - afraid she'll find out, that when she sees me she'll forget about you, that she and I will go back to what we had before," he finished her thought.

She didn't see any point in denying the fear that was plainly written on her face, so she nodded.

"I don't think that would happen," he said softly. "And maybe, six months ago, I would have mourned that, but… Kim and I aren't the people we were at graduation, too much has happened since then. Even though we said nothing would ever come between us, we were young, we were naive, and we were wrong. It happens, and it's okay. It's okay," he repeated.

He was interrupted by a buzzing sound, and he pulled out a red and grey version of the Kimmunicator, pausing for a second to collect himself before answering. "Hey Wade, what's the news?"

"I think I have her," Wade grinned, then he looked at Ron's sober face, Shego's frown. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing, buddy." Ron stood up suddenly, and extended a hand to Shego, who accepted it and pulled herself up gingerly, wincing at the pain that spiked through her legs and shoulder at the movement.

"What makes you sure you've found her?" she asked, and a map of the world popped up with a constant ping appearing somewhere in the south of Thailand.

"It's pinging on the exact frequency of the Kimmunicator's emergency signal, and the only people who know that are me, Kim, and a third party manufacturer I trust completely.. So I think she's found a way to broadcast her location somehow. If it's a facility of some sort, she could be free and hiding on the inside. I'll have detailed satellite scans of the site by the time you reach the site."

"They couldn't have reverse engineered the signal from the suit you gave her?" Shego asked.

Wade shook his head. "The wrist pod of the suit would have self destructed as soon as they tried to open it, so they've simply shielded it somehow, which is why I haven't been able to find her for the past six weeks. And I don't think that's the source, either, the transmitter has a different signature, so I don't think they've cracked my hardware or encryption."

Ron nodded. "Okay, it sounds…." He trailed off, and both Wade and Shego stared at him. "Well, what do you know, she's in action."

"How could you possibly know that?" Wade asked.

Ron inclined his head to one side, acknowledging the apparent impossibility, then shrugged. "Would you believe me if I said that I felt it?" he asked, and Shego shook her head.

Wade snorted. "Whatever you say, Ron," and disconnected.

Ron looked at Shego.

"No, I don't really believe you. Although, I'm not sure what I believe, right now."

"Well, as I said, Kim's awake, and she's in a fight, and she needs us."

"You got a feeling about that, too?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Fucking mystical crap," Shego muttered, and Ron just laughed. "I'm coming with you," she added.

His amusement vanished, even as another figure stepped up out towards them from the shadows from the treeline. Shego blinked in surprise - she hadn't noticed another observer anywhere near her.

"No, you're not," he said quietly, before turning to the newcomer. "Yori, prep the jet and a team of our best. I'll be with you in a moment."

The young woman that Shego recognized now as one of the people she had seen shadowing her on several occasions - bowed respectfully to Ron, then left back the way she had come.

"What do you mean, no?" Shego demanded.

Ron stared pointedly at her clothing and what was hidden under it, the hospital gown covering but not hiding completely the two casts and multiple bandages that still wrapped her body. The bones had mostly knitted and the scars on her torso were fading, but she was nowhere near 100% fit, and they both knew it.

She'd never taken this long to heal from such minor (well, relatively minor, for her) injuries before, but she had a suspicion it was so slow because of how far she'd pushed herself in Sydney. That was cold comfort right now, she wanted to be a part of this, she _needed_ to be there for Kim...

"I…"

"Look, we could do this right now, the whole winner goes off and rescues the girl, the loser stays behind and licks their wounds thing - if you really _really_ want," Ron said carefully. "And sure, there's still every possibility you _might_ beat me -" and suddenly his eyes were flecked again with blue and she instinctively shivered. "But you have to ask yourself, Shego, how badly would you be hurting when you actually got to her? Would you be any use to her at all?"

 _Damnit._

 _Damn you Ron Stoppable._

"Fine, go! Just… just get her back safe." She turned her back to him and folded her arms over her chest as hot tears filled her eyes. _So useless,_ she thought to herself. _So bloody useless, always useless._

A soft hand landed on her shoulder, and she didn't immediately shrug it off… but a second later, it was gone of its own accord. She heard him pull his hood up, then he vanished into the background noise as the wind howled a lament over the crashing surf below.

 _I still haven't forgiven you for saving my life instead of saving her_ , Shego thought bitterly.

"Fucking ninjas!" Shego shouted emphatically into the empty surrounds. There was no reply from the wind behind her… but she felt a little better for it anyway.

She eased herself back down to sit by the ledge and draped her legs out into the air again. "This better not be another bloody dead end," she muttered.

* * *

 **Additional A/N** : The nickname 'Demon of Go City' that Ron calls Shego in this chapter is stolen blatantly from Tempest Dash, who used it as a story title. My version is vastly different, I just thought it was a wicked cool nickname for her. I hope he doesn't mind me appropriating it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Authors Note:** Hi there folks, Chapter Four is here. Things start to ramp up from here... at least for now. The escape isn't quite going to go as easy as Kim might have hoped though. I've done as best as I could with polishing this one up, but it got to the point where I started to dislike most of it more than I liked it, which is how I knew I had to push it out or I would do something drastic. I hope you guys enjoy it, at least.

 **Standard Disclaimer:** The various characters from the Kim Possible series are all owned by Disney. All registered trade names property of their respective owners. Cheap shots at celebrities constitute fair usage.

* * *

 **Chapter Four.**

The first few minutes were easy travelling for Kim and her new companion, with only the monotonous droning of the alarm for company, until-

The corridors of the facility were narrow and sparsely lit, and Kim had only milliseconds to react when a squad of guards appeared to her left side as she crossed a junction. She slid to a stop and pressed herself flat into the wall just past the corner. Ahead of her, she saw Lawson stop and turn and raise an eyebrow at Kim's evasive actions… only to tuck the batons behind her back and stride towards the troops that appeared in the junction, their weapons raised but not directly pointed at her.

"Dr Michaels, please come with us. You should not be outside your designated area during a security alert."

For the first time Kim heard one of the guards speak, and it was an odd, distorted voice that came from deep in his throat. The heavy helmet she'd glimpsed as she raced past couldn't explain the odd electronic nature of it, she thought momentarily, then dismissed it as irrelevant.

"Yes. I was with a colleague in another area. I will accompany you immediately," Lawson said politely, walking slowly towards them.

As the squad waited just out of her sight, Kim judged the distance carefully and flashed a quick signal that wasn't even acknowledged. When the other woman was almost perfectly parallel with her, she pushed off the wall and dove forward, linking hands with Lawson who rotated on her feet and spun in a circle, throwing Kim into the two nearest guards.

One fell to her first baton strike, a crushing blow to the chest that sent him reeling, collapsing to the ground and gasping for breath. The second fell a second later to a hook sweep that she followed with a roll away from the first return blow, turning the roll into a leap that took the last guard unawares. Her shoulder slammed into the armored chest, and the force was enough to drive the wind out of both of them, but Kim had braced herself somewhat. She spun off him and slammed his visor with the baton, cracking it, and then again, pulverizing his nose and slamming his head to the ground again. He didn't stir.

Behind her, there were five, six, seven dull _thuds_ then two heavier crashes of men falling to the ground. Kim sent a carefully judged blow to the side of the last guard's head, and looked up. Lawson, or Michaels, or whatever her name was, stared back at her with a small smile. "Okay, you're actually sort of impressing me now. I honestly thought most of the stories about you were all hype, that you'd crumble at the first real test."

Kim blinked in surprise, then snorted. "Things tend to get exaggerated, sure, but you don't get a resume like mine without some skill. You can't have seen or heard that much if you weren't convinced I was the real deal. How much did you really see of me?"

The woman narrowed her eyes. "Enough," she said shortly, turning away.

"And by the way, is it Lawson, or Michaels?" Kim asked, raising an eyebrow.

Lawson's smile had disappeared when she turned back around, and Kim once again felt a slight chill under the stare. "This is not the time," she said, and set back off down the corridor. "Come on, we need to get to the armory fast. It's this way."

Kim grabbed another baton from one of the downed guards on a whim, and raced after her. As she did so, the sound of the alarm tone changed, and she shot a questioning look at the other woman.

"I take it that means something," she inquired, when no response was forthcoming.

"Yeah, it means they're trying even harder to kill us," Lawson/Michaels responded, shaking her head. "What did you think it meant?"

"Well, I was trying to work out if that was the 'send reinforcements' alarm or the 'evacuate the lower levels, we're going to flood it with toxic gas' alarm."

The other woman shot her a _very_ peculiar look. "Why would _anyone_ have a specific alarm for that?"

Kim just shrugged. "What can I say, I guess Drakken just really liked different types of alarms." _Maybe because it used to annoy Shego?_ She wondered briefly. _Huh, that might actually be it._

As they pressed on, the number of guards they encountered rose, but always in the small squads of five, never more than that, and while the circumstances might have differed slightly, the results were never really in doubt as Kim's own fighting ability, matched with a partner who was different but talented enough to work with her at an instinctual level - much like her first co-operative fights with Shego - was too much for the forces arrayed against them.

By the time they'd been running for what felt like at least an hour, Kim had started to feel like they'd been going in circles. Each time she thought she had a grip on where they were going, Lawson would disappear into what seemed to be random rooms, telling Kim to stand guard, only to pull back after a minute or less and press on.

Finally, her frustration got the better of her, and she came to a stop in the middle of the corridor, scowling at the retreating back of her supposed ally.

"Lawson!" Kim shouted as the woman continued. _Oh for the love of.._ "Lawson, would you stop for a second?"

The black haired woman continued to ignore her until she finally realized that Kim had stopped following her. It took about ten seconds, but at the end of the current corridor, the other woman looked back and frowned, then waved Kim forward.

The redhead folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the wall casually, tapping her foot ever so slightly. _I can wait you out_ , she thought to herself. Lawson's agitation increased to the point of full blown frustration, but when it became obvious that Kim wasn't moving, Lawson stalked back to her.

"What the hell are you doing, Possible?" she demanded, a furious scowl marring her face. "In case you'd forgotten, we're in the middle of a lair with an unknown number of guards probably closing in on our location… and you've decided to take a quick rest break?"

Kim scowled. "We've been going for what, an _hour_? We've put down something like forty, fifty guards, the last of which was ten minutes ago. If there were any left, we'd have seen them by now. How freaking big is this place? Why do we keep stopping? What are you _doing_ in these labs? And _why aren't we at an armory yet_?" She ground out the last question and pushed off the wall, stepping in close to the woman, wary and ready for anything.

Lawson narrowed her eyes. "I'm getting us _out_ of here," she growled.

"How?"

"Oh for f... I'm setting up decoys. Dummy hacks. False alarms, self destruct countdowns, bio-hazard warning alarms and radiation leak alerts. In every lab we've stopped in, I've set up multiple cascading alarms in labs nearby, leading both towards and away from us. The reason we haven't seen _more_ guards is because they're investigating every single ghost and shadow I'm throwing at them. And right now you.. are.. not.. Helping." She punctuated the last four words by jabbing a finger in Kim's chest.

"This wasn't the plan. You were supposed to take us straight to the armory so we could blend in and get out of here."

"I've changed the plan. Keep up, would you?"

"Fine," Kim scowled. "Maybe this would go faster if you would let me help. I'm not Wade, but I know my way around-"

"Not a chance," Lawson said. Kim growled in the back of her throat, but Lawson turned and stalked away again, her hair tossing behind her.

"Goddammit, what the hell is wrong with you?" Kim shouted, and punched a wall, not quite hard enough to do major damage to her fist, but hard enough to hurt.

"When you're finished with your tantrum, you can catch up with the adults in the corridor," Lawson called back over her shoulder, a mocking tone infusing her voice. Kim ignored her for a second, then finally started after the infuriating woman, rubbing her suddenly aching fist with her other hand and trying to ignore the other constantly growing pains in her legs and arms from the fighting and running.

 _Actually, I should have realized that before now. I am in_ far _better condition than someone who spent eight whole weeks unconscious would normally be. Were they keeping me fit, somehow, preventing muscle loss?_

 _Or did she lie to me how long it has been? And if she did… why?_

On top of that mystery, the seemingly random changes of personality in Lawson were confusing the hell out of her. Most of the time she seemed calm, collected, and professional, almost scarily dispassionate, but in a heartbeat she was alternately furious or viciously snarky, far more than Shego ever was. The longer she spent around the woman, the more careful she was convinced she needed to be.

By the time Kim reached the end of the latest identical corridor, Lawson had disappeared - Kim assumed into yet another lab, though it took her a moment to find her location, until an open door with a leg lying through it helpfully drew her attention, about thirty meters ahead of her. When she made it to the door, there were several more bodies on the ground - most looked to be unconscious, but Lawson seemed increasingly unconcerned about dealing serious injuries to the guards, which only added to the worry Kim was starting to feel about the woman.

She rounded a large machine of some sort and found Lawson at a large bank of instruments. She was alternating her attention between the control panel and something that looked for all the world like a gigantic test tube just in front of her. Inside that tube was...

"My battlesuit!" Kim almost cheered with joy. _Well that'll boost my odds of getting out of here significantly!_ "I wondered where that was! Let's get it out of that tube, and then we can _really_ get out of here."

She stepped towards the panel, intent on convincing Lawson to open the chamber and let her put it on, but the older woman turned and Kim froze in her tracks.

 _Literally_ froze in her tracks, as the woman aimed a remote of some sort and pointed it at her.

"What... what did you do to me?" she asked, then screamed in fright as she collapsed like a puppet that had had its strings suddenly cut.

"I'm sorry Possible, but this is where we part ways. It's been... well, yeah. It's been." Lawson's voice had gone even colder than before, somehow, and the look in her eyes was vacant, distant, and totally devoid of feeling.

Kim tried to move, panic rising up from within her. As she struggled, a small, cold, rational part of her was grateful that her mouth was still working - and her lungs, for that matter. The panic started to overwhelm her, even as she forced herself to take measured, slow breaths in and out.

"You were right before when you guessed that I was keeping you under for a reason, but I didn't tell you what it was," Lawson said, and tilted her head to one side as if considering whether or not to continue, then she shrugged "I don't see how it'll matter if I tell you early, since I imagine that they'll finish the process as soon as they recapture you."

"What did you do to me?" Kim asked, trying but failing to keep the fear out of her voice.

"It's not what _I_ did, Possible, it's what our friendly hosts did when they grabbed you," Lawson sneered at her. "They implanted cybertronic nanobots to interface with your central nervous system all the way up to the motor control systems in your brain. They can't settle in while you're awake, there's too much electrical interference, but an unconscious subject is exactly what's required for implantation, and thus, your extended nap."

"Cybertronic... nanobots?" _Oh crap_ , Kim thought. _Dad's stuff. Like in Drakken's Diablos?_ She held tight to the knowledge that at the very least she was still talking and still breathing. While those two things were true, she was sure she could find _some_ way out of this new nightmare.

"Normally the process only takes three to four weeks, but I kept you in your _beauty sleep_ a little longer, and passed it off as 'extreme circumstances' as a result of the trauma you took when they captured you. Haven't you noticed some of the guards here seem a bit.. robotic?" Lawson asked, her voice becoming mocking. "They fight, but they don't fight well."

Kim _had_ in fact noticed that, but hadn't really bothered to analyse it all that closely because it was proving to be a beneficial factor in her escape.

"It's because they've been through the same procedure, but are failed examples where the true cybernetic conversions didn't fully take for one reason or another. Since they can't function with the enhancements, they get simple command override implants, and are trained as guard dogs for basic facility work."

"That's…"

"Disgusting? Amazing? An incredible leap in mind-to-machine interfaces? Yes, yes, and yes," Lawson said.

"You're sick. And I'm going to put a stop to this."

Lawson laughed at Kim's defiance and looked down on her with a pitying expression. "Sure, sweetheart. I don't know if you've realized it, but you're helpless. The only things you're moving right now are lungs, head, and mouth, and I can take even those away from you if I want. Interrupting autonomic function is hard to implement and dangerous to maintain, but.."

She pointed the remote at Kim and clicked it. The redhead waited for the lack of oxygen to start to affect her, but her breathing remained slow and steady, and after a second, she found her lips widening into a smirk.

"Guess not _everything_ took like you thought it would," she observed.

A furious Lawson nearly threw the remote to the ground, then recovered her poise, the cold mask slipping back onto her face.

"It doesn't matter anyway," she barked. "I'm about to get what I came for, and you're about to suffer more than you can possibly imagine. You might be still able to talk, but you can't move, and you can _definitely_ still feel pain… so I'm going to give you a whole world of it."

A loud hissing sound filled the lab as coolant vented from the tube that was holding the battlesuit. A few moments later, a cloud of white steam poured across the floor, causing Kim to shiver as it passed over her. Unseen in the fog, Lawson moved towards the rack which the battlesuit was on, and made to lift it off.

"Shit, that's cold."

Scuffling, then a satisfied grunt came from above her, and Kim heard Lawson pulling gloves of some sort on, then the woman was reaching in and pulling the suit out. As the fog cleared, Kim looked up to see Lawson holding the suit triumphantly above her, a mocking smile twisting her face.

"This suit.. This suit means I can finally fucking leave this shit hole… with the nice side effect of making me very, very rich. And I'm going to cripple you permanently while I'm at it."

Kim looked at the suit as Lawson held it, noticing the water starting to drip off of the fully deployed form of the suit. She realized that it hadn't collapsed to it's normal stored form in the wrist Kimmunicator because it had been chilled way below freezing, cold enough to reach the point where the functionality of the nanobots that made up the suit itself would be almost totally disabled.

But… she could also tell that the suit was coming back online, thanks to the telltale shimmer in the 'fabric' as the nanobots started to realign themselves.

And if the suit was online, there were some parts of it she could use. Even if she wasn't _wearing_ it.

 _Please let this work_ , she thought to herself. _I'm only going to have one shot at this._

"Suit: Taser field!" she called loudly, and there was a momentary pause where nothing happened. Lawson looked down at her with a puzzled look, then her eyes widened in shock…

And then they widened in a different kind of shock as a brilliant sphere of blue energy formed around the suit and expanded maybe a foot or two - not as concentrated as the shield it could produce, but still strong enough to almost blind Kim. A surge of electricity raced through Lawson's body and down to the cold, wet floor despite the gloves she was wearing. The sudden muscular convulsions opened her hands for just long enough for the suit to slip from her hands.

As Lawson took a half step back, seemingly purely on instinct, she fell thanks to her coordination being wrecked by the electrical impulses disrupting her central nervous system. As she collapsed, she tried to snatch at the battlesuit again, only for it to float to the ground, landing partially on Kim's lower left leg.

At the moment of contact, a chill ran through her, as the suit read her DNA and confirmed her bioprint.

She focused on the sensation of the suit on her leg, and grinned. _Well I'm one for one, here's hoping I can go two for two._

"Suit: Integrate," she said. The next thing she felt was the familiar but always uncomfortable slithering feeling of the suit's nanobots sliding up her body - only multiplied by a hundred thanks to the residual cold of the storage in deep freeze - until the suit had covered her completely, the Kimmunicator had slid to its familiar spot on her wrist, and the integrated hood/mask formed over her face.

Wade had built the remote voice activation into the first suit on a whim last year, after realizing there was still a chance that Kim might be disabled and require protection while separated from the suit. That little bit of foresight was going to be worth a dozen trips to Bueno Nacho - or wherever else Wade decided to cash in his rewards - when she got back.

As the mask integrated with her eyes, the room swum back into view just in time for her to try flinch away from the other figure in the room - not that she actually ended up moving any part of her body.

"N.. no. No! NO!" Lawson screamed, and lashed out in a vicious kick at Kim's leg. The limited self protection software in the suit saw the attack coming and reacted accordingly, hardening the outer shell just moments before impact, and a loud _crack_ echoing around the lab. The resultant scream of pain brought a hidden but very vicious smile to Kim's face.

 _Okay, still can't move, but I'm definitely better protected than I was before. That's something at least._

"Sorry to disappoint you, Lawson, or whoever you are, but I think I'll be holding on to this, at least for now," she said, the suit amplifying her voice into the lab.

Lawson's scream of frustration echoed, followed by several crashes as lab equipment, computers, and more things went flying in her rage.

A very familiar and extremely welcome voice suddenly sounded in her ear.

"Kim? Kim, can you hear me?"

"Wade! Boy am I glad to hear your voice! I'm in a bit of a pickle, and I could use your help."

"I know! You're in South-East Asia, whatever you did to get a signal going worked perfectly. I have a rescue team on the way but they're still going to be a while… I guess you finally found the suit?"

Kim smiled. "They were keeping it in a liquid nitrogen bath to force it into emergency self preservation mode, nothing else was going on, until someone defrosted it, tried to steal it."

"That would explain why I couldn't track it before now. Well, now that you've got it on, you'll be able to handle things until your evac arrives."

The smile on her face fell away. "That's kinda one of the things I need you help with. Uh.. things are a little bit more complicated than that," she said, as Lawson stalked back towards her - with a CO2 fire extinguisher in her hands. As the cold spray hit her, Kim tried to shake her head - the extinguisher would never get the suit cold enough to disable it…

… but it was annoying and it was still cold, she realized.

"Complicated how?" Wade asked.

"Uhhhh… short version? Injection of something to spine, blocking muscle control of my arms and legs. Still breathing and talking though."

She didn't exactly know why she felt like she couldn't tell him about the nanobots that Lawson had claimed were the true cause of her sudden and nearly total paralysis. Was it that she didn't really believe it, or that she didn't want Wade to know how completely - and how easily - she'd been disabled?

There was a long ten seconds of silence. Kim sat quietly, knowing Wade's brain was working in overdrive, developing ideas, processing them, and rejecting them at a speed few people could match, and she knew he'd have a solution of some sort eventually.

"Shit," he muttered, and she felt those hopes evaporate slightly.

"Wade…?"

"No, no, it's okay, Kim. I… I got something. It's not much, but it's something. Let me do a really crude scan with the suit's..."

"If I could just move my arms and legs, it would be better than what I've got right now, which is absolutely nothing," she muttered. "What have you got?"

Lawson had given up on the extinguisher and was heading for the exit. _Shit, she's getting away!_

"I may be able to tie the suit's muscular enhancers directly into your own movement cortex, like it was reading your mind's intentions and activating them accordingly. The suit can already perform routine scans as part of the monitoring software."

Kim narrowed her eyes at that. It wasn't something she remembered being on any of the manuals, exactly. Had she _really_ agreed to let Wade basically run a continual brain scan on her when using the suit?

"I have a baseline of how your brain already instructs the muscles it normally would, now all I have to do is tie it to the suit's enhancers and activate them instead of your muscles," he continued in a rush. "Hopefully that'll give you some level movement. I mean, hypothetically, the suit should allow this to work for everything from the legs down to the fingers, like I said, it already knows how you think to move. Well.. it might. This is going to be a really crude hack, but it'll probably work."

"I heard a lot of maybe, hopefully, and probably there," Kim said slowly.

"It's the best I've got. If you're in trouble, it's your best option."

"Yeah… yeah… okay, do it. And tell your rescue group to hurry it up. I get the feeling that I was duped, and even though I managed a Hail Mary, I'm suddenly fairly sure there's still a lot of troops down here between me and them."

"I will," he promised. "Now this might hurt a little bit."

 **KP KP KP**

Aboard the Yamanouchi VTOL, Ron Stoppable blinked then cocked his head to one side, before reaching out and toggling the secure communications link on one of the multi-function displays in front of him.

"Wade, what's going on? Is Kim okay?"

As the question left his lips, he heard a feminine - and disturbingly recognizable - scream emanating from the other end of the link.

"Sorry Ron, little busy!" Wade shouted. "Kim, hold on, I'm trying to adjust the sensitivity on the fly but you're throwing all the readings off the baseline!"

A scream of what sounded a lot like " _No shit!"_ filled the cockpit.

Ron looked at Yori, seated in the cockpit beside him, then reached forward to flick the mute button on the MFD. He shifted his hand across and threw the jet's throttle into full afterburner. Fuel consumption went out the window, but with it, so did their original ETA.

A yelp or two emanated from the cabin, and a moment later, a throat cleared behind him. He turned his head to find Hirotaka bracing himself in the cockpit door, an inquiring look on his face.

"Sorry, Hiro, we just got our priorities updated a little. Need to make up some time," Ron said softly.

Hirotaka, for his part, was looking down at the communications panel, where Wade's face was silently shouting at his other screen.

"Possible-san is in trouble?" he asked. "That scream did not sound pleasant at all."

Ron's face was unreadable, his eyes distant. "Yeah, she's in pain, but… it's not because someone's hurting her," he added. "Huh, it's almost like she's hurting… herself?"

"I do not understand," Yori said softly.

"Neither do I," Ron growled. He looked back, and Wade's face was staring up at him, ashen. He turned the controls over to Yori and unmuted the channel. "Wade, what's going on?"

"It's complicated, Ron. The really, really, really short version? She's got the suit, but her injuries are hampering her movement, and the suit is overcompensating and hurting her every time she uses it. I'm going to try and get her to hide and wait for you… but you know Kim."

Ron nodded. "We're at full burner now, we'll be over the target in less than thirty minutes, but we won't have the reserve to stay on station and make it back without topping up. Can you get us a secure refueling station nearby, preferably one that won't ask any questions?"

Wade paused, spun to another screen, typed for a few seconds, then nodded. "Yes. I think I can get you a refuel on board the USNS Rappahannock - they're a US Navy supply vessel on patrol with the 7th Fleet in the South China Sea. They're being told you're a Japanese Self Defense Force reconnaissance jet, and won't ask too many questions even though you don't exactly look like one."

Ron nodded. It wasn't even all that far from the truth, really, even if his current mission wasn't exactly sanctioned - either by the Japanese government, or Yamanouchi (at least, _officially_ sanctioned in the latter case). "Thanks, buddy. How's she doing?"

"She's scared, she's sore, she's pissed, so about what you'd expect," Wade said with a resigned sigh. "She's also not telling me something, but…"

"That's the Kim we know and love," Ron finished for him, a faint smile brushing his lips. "Got any heads up on what we're flying into?"

"Satellite scans came up empty, but that's kind of the problem - they've been doctored, and doctored carefully enough that they hold up to a cursory scan of the images. I've been waiting for a commercial sat with a live view that I actually have a mostly legitimate access to to pass over. It's just coming into range now."

"Not borrowing the NRO's…"

"Noooo," Wade cut him off with a scowl. "I got a warning about that from Dr Director last time. They don't exactly appreciate me retasking their assets - at least, not without asking first, which I don't have time for - and even when I do and they like my image stabilization and enhancement software, they still get possessive."

Ron just waited.

"Right, focusing. Got a picture coming up at relatively high angle now," Wade said, switching his screen, then zooming the view of Earth and rotating it the horizontal for them. "Oh boy."

"What am I looking at?" Ron asked.

"Looks like a fairly large facility in the deep Vietnamese jungle," Wade said. "Only, it's not as large as it used to be."

A large square popped up over a blurry section, and as the picture quality resolved slightly, Ron spotted what looked like the remains of several buildings that surrounded a larger building that looked like a warehouse of some description. Around it, at fairly even distances that he couldn't accurately guess at, were small towers he took for guard outposts or similar structures. As he waited further, small dots circled the sight at speeds far too rapid for them to be people, and buzzed across towards a concentration of towers that he guessed might be what constituted the 'front' entrance, flashes of light coming from both the dots and the towers.

"Am I seeing what I think I am?" he asked. "Those are helicopters or VTOLs?"

"Yeah, and they're not alone, look. Two groups are engaged on the ground."

The image shifted and zoomed in, and as it refocused, Ron was able to finally see the running battle on the ground with two sets of forces arrayed against one another. One group was clearly defending, squads of troops dug into the large bits of rubble that were the remnants of the satellite buildings around the main one, the other, larger force, seemed to be pressing the attack _en masse_ towards the largest remaining structure that he'd seen first. As he watched, one of the defensive positions exploded as a helicopter or VTOL fired a missile into it, while off to the side, the guard towers were taking similar punishment.

"This just became somewhat more complicated," Hirotaka observed from the rear of the cockpit, _sotto voce_.

Ron nodded, then smiled again. "Or possibly less. Wade, those hench uniforms don't look at all familiar. Are we looking at new players in the game, here?"

"Could be. We do know that some very powerful people were looking for Kim in Sydney, and there was more than one group there."

"Power play?" Ron softly, and both Hirotaka and Yori nodded. "I sense an opportunity."

Wade smiled at him. "What's better than chaos?" he asked rhetorically.

"More chaos," Ron answered, and his eyes closed for a moment, then snapped open. "Wade, keep a close eye on the battle down there. As we engage, I want to know which side seems to have the upper hand, we hit them first. Yori - you're our best infiltrator by far, find your way inside the facility - expect a large part of it to be underground. Find Kim, and get her out - over any objection she might have… but try to be gentle. Our rendezvous point is going to have to be flexible, but call in the jet if you're safe to do so. Hiro, you're with me, we're going to push the invading force off balance and prevent them grabbing Kim and at the same time keep the defenders busy enough to keep her safe and let Yori get to her." He paused, then turned. "Get Takeda up here, she'll be flying and providing close air support as well as dust off. Wade, liaise with her on priority targets and best drop locations, as well as anything that comes up during the operation. I've gotta go prepare the squad."

Hirotaka bowed and turned back into the small cabin of the jet, while Wade nodded and muted his link momentarily, turning back to the other screen.

Ron turned back to Yori, and gave her a wide smile. "I am sorry for putting you in such danger, Yori-kun," he whispered. "But I meant what I said about you being our best infiltrator. I trust you to find her and bring her out safely."

Yori's blush was slight - she had excellent control over her emotions most of the time - but Ron could still see it. She bowed her head to hide it. "I will find Possible-san and return her safely, I promise."

"I know you will. And don't worry, I'll keep Hiro safe."

With a snort, his friend returned to the cockpit, another of the Yamanouchi ninjas by his side, who slipped into the pilot's seat as Ron vacated it.

"Please, Stoppable-san, it will be _I_ keeping _you_ safe out there, as always."

Ron shook his head, then the two men high fived each other as they stepped back into the cabin.

Yori turned to the young pilot who took control and shook her head as she stood up, both women smiling as the same thought crossed their mind at the same time.

 _Men!_

 **KP KP KP**

For the first ten minutes, it didn't matter how much she tried to grit her teeth and bear it, the pain of moving was so intense that it ripped a scream from her throat every time she tried to stand. Thankfully, Wade had suppressed the external speakers of the suit, otherwise everyone within a mile radius would know exactly where she was.

It had taken almost the entirety of that ten minutes for her to make her way agonizingly towards one wall, where she finally managed to brace herself in a sitting position and paused to take stock of her situation.

 _Can't move my own muscles._

 _Battlesuit can compensate by direct interface but when the muscles resist it's a toss up as to whether the muscles, the tendons or the bones give first._

 _I'm basically on the verge of breaking myself in half._

Aside from that, everything was peachy. Wade had told her a rescue force was on the way, and that she was relatively safe for now.

Relatively being the operative word.

She blinked as a shadow suddenly slipped across the door of the lab she was stuck in, and then operating on pure instinct, threw herself at the guards that had just entered, noticing only at the last second that these moved far faster and reacted more fluidly than most of the ones she had seen to this point.

"Wade!" she shouted, as the first spasms of pain slammed into her from the movements orchestrated by the battlesuit, her muscles and joints and tendons screaming their protest into every fiber of her being that was currently capable of feeling pain. "Does the Kimmunicator still have that specific special reserve we talked about once?"

"Yess..?" his questioning voice came back, as she dropped her weight and kicked out at the nearest guard with a foot, the attack being far slower than her usual speed and missing the mark as a result. The guard leaped over her attack before returning it with a kick of his own that she avoided by flopping away and rolling until she could lever herself to her feet, standing with her back against the wall of the lab.

"I need you to dose me with it, right now."

"Kim! That could kill you in your current condition. It's not safe!"

"If you don't give me it, these guys will kill me before your rescue team gets here. I need it, Wade, and I need it now."

"I'm going to regret this," she heard him mutter. "You're probably going to regret it more.."

"You can lecture me about it later, I promise, if I survive, which I won't unless you.."

There was a sharp hissing noise from the inside of the Kimmunicator that was sitting on her wrist, and she felt the jab in the surface skin, followed by the burning rush of the drug concoction making its way to her core. She almost stopped moving for a second, and had to desperately ward of a series of blows until...

"Ohhh…"

She felt her eyes dilate, and as she backed away from the guards, the sudden clarity in which she saw the room and her situation was in stark contrast to how dark and helpless it had seemed before. As her breathing steadied and the pain faded, she grinned inside the hood, ignoring the questioning voice that seemed to come from very far away despite being right beside her ear.

Four figures in heavier armor than she'd previously seen confronted her, each carrying a heavy baton of the same type that she had purloined with Lawson in their initial breakout. Hers lay discarded somewhere in this very room, lost when she'd been paralyzed by the treacherous doctor. The addition of a small circular shield on their left arms made her pause, but only momentarily.

The four moved to surround her, spaced out enough that they wouldn't interfere with each other, and she nodded slowly at their sensible tactics as she bumped into a wall behind her.

 _Have to take the initiative. First objective, eliminate as much of their combat efficiency as you can before they attack. Then level the playing field weapon wise_ , her racing mind told her. _Right-most guard is the closest and will attack first. Beat him to the punch._

Barely five seconds had gone by from the first rush hitting her and suddenly she felt like she could take on a dozen people - no, a hundred! That conviction wasn't remotely tempered by the nagging knowledge at the back of her mind that the artificial boost she was currently enjoying was not indefinite, and she needed to make the most of the advantage while it lasted.

No... she was the most dangerous person in the room, and it was time to remind these pretenders of that fact. Painfully.

She exploded from the wall like she'd been shot out of a cannon, faking to her left, causing the four men facing her to being moving that way almost instinctively, before she spun in place and lashed out to her right with a combination of punches and kicks, falling on her chosen target before he could fully react to her sudden change of direction. She slipped under a desperate counterattack with the baton and grabbed the arm holding it, spinning around it and wrenching it high up behind his back, the satisfying _crack_ of a dislocating shoulder bringing a vicious grin to her face, but strangely eliciting no sound from the guard.

She pulled the baton from his limp hand and slammed his head into the wall beside her, and, when that didn't send him to the ground, repeated it while simultaneously fending off a renewed attack from the other three with the baton, parrying two strikes and returning with a thrust of her own that only barely missed the larynx of the third, who'd stepped a little closer to try and rescue his companion.

As he stepped back and the first guard went down finally, Kim straightened and lashed forward with an even faster series of blows, none of which were really designed to hit but were setting up for her finisher, a high fake that rolled around into a vicious shot to the groin.

 _Aha,_ she thought. _Hard to remove that weak spot_.

She rolled out of the way of a frenzied counterattack from the last two standing guards, putting the one currently clutching at his probably mangled genitals between her and them for half a second, snaffling the discarded baton from him for good measure. As she crouched, she held both batons out, arms extended, wide and ready for them to go to either side.

The pumping of her heart roared in her ears as she waited, the artificial evenness of her breathing hiding the ragged edge of pain that was starting to sear through the focus.

" _Kim?"_ Again, she ignored the voice, focused on the subtlest movements of her two remaining foes, looking for cues as to how they would come at her.

The guards still managed to surprise her by going over the top, jumping over their fallen companion in unison and bringing their batons down towards her with impressive coordination, but she reacted before the twin strikes could hit, diving past the attacks and over the head of the moaning guard, kicking him backwards to spoiling their attempted turns. She dashed to the doorway, taking the opportunity to escape the confines of the lab, and sprinted out into the corridor as fast as she could go.

 _Catch me if you can, boys_ , her mind whispered, even as some part of her was aware she was moving nowhere near her fastest speed. It would have to be fast enough.

She took in little of the facility as she ran, picking her direction at cross intersections and T-junctions purely by random choice, but always with a vague sense of purpose. Behind, she heard little other than heavy footfalls, as several more guards joined the strangely quiet pursuit - she was used to at least a little bit more shouting than this when running from Henches.

A sudden premonition of danger swept over her at a barely heard sound somewhere in the group behind her and she slid to the ground as she passed another junction, a beam of bright blue energy sweeping through where her torso would have been a moment before.

 _Looks like they're no longer trying to keep me alive_ , she noted dispassionately. _Guess I should return the favor_.

She sprang to her feet and bolted down the new corridor, before having no choice but to veer into what was - finally - the armory she'd been hoping for. She grabbed an energy rifle from the nearest rack to her, and pulled out the power packs were stored above them, slapping the pack home into the rifle and flipping it's power on. Turning back the way she'd come, she leaned back out the door and pulled the trigger at the feet of the oncoming guards.

Nothing happened. Even her hyperfocused brain blanked for a second, until the rifle buzzed angrily at her.

 _Oh crap._

"Wade, I need a weapon hack!" she called, her voice sounding strange to her ears. She dashed to the doorway and slammed the heavy door shut, guessing that it might be more resistant to the weapon fire of her pursuit than anything else she'd seen while she'd been running.

"On it!" he told her. "But Kim, listen: you're at your limit of stress," he added, a warning note creeping into his voice.

Lost in the rush of the stimulant still, Kim's brain ignored the warning and focused on the sound of the enemies moving outside. "Now would be good!"

"Kim, you're at max stress. You do much more, and you won't make it home. Do you understand me? Your body can't take it. You won't make it back to Shego."

Despite the buzzing in her mind, the last word made it through and, though it took a second, the impact of it shook her out of the haze that had consumed her, even as the rifle buzzed a more pleasant tone in her hands. Not really thinking of the risk, she eased the door open and poked her head back out for a half second, pulling it back in as another beam of energy lanced past her.

The guards had taken a defensive posture about twenty meters away down the corridor. Momentarily confused, she recalled suddenly that she'd been running down a dead end corridor when she'd found the armory.

She'd effectively pinned herself down and made her recapture inevitable.

 _Good job, Kim_ , she thought sarcastically as she slammed the door shut again. She limped further into the armory, a groan escaping her as the screaming of pain from her body returned with a vengeance. G _otta find a way to end this now._ _Wade was right, I_ can't _handle this much longer_.

For almost a 30 seconds she searched the room for some escape or advantage, then sighed, having found nothing. She turned back to the door, dialing the power on the rifle down to a lower setting. Standing back, she aimed it at the seam of the door and pulled the trigger, holding down a continuous beam until she'd swept it over all four sides of the door twice, heating the metal of the door enough to cause it to expand and jam, and melting enough of the doorway to add to the impromptu weld.

She dropped the rifle to the side, and picked her way to the back of the room, looking for other options she might have missed at first glance.

"Wade?" she whispered, her throat suddenly burning with agony.

"Kim? You're back?"

"Yeah," she groaned. "Sorry… I… I don't know what came over me."

"You were screaming," he said quietly. "In pain, the whole time you were fighting and running."

The pain in her throat suddenly made sense. "I… I didn't feel it. I didn't even realize I was."

"Probably for the best. Where are you? I heard the rifle firing."

"I used it to weld the door shut, sealing me in the armory. It was a dead end, didn't have much of a choice. Sorry, I clearly wasn't thinking."

"How many guards outside? And how long do you think the seal will hold?"

"Fifteen, maybe twenty out there. They'll have something to break in sooner or later… I'm so sorry, Wade. I know you tried."

Wade didn't respond for a second, and for a heartbreaking moment, she thought he'd given up on her.

"Kim. I need you to get to the far corner of the armory. Now."

"What?"

"Just… trust me," he said.

In her view, a blink of light appeared as far away from the door as it was possible to get from the door. She eased her way over there, grimacing in pain as she went. "Not sure what good this'll do," she protested as she fell against the wall and slid to the ground. Maybe they take an extra five seconds to find me."

Once again, Wade didn't immediately respond, and she shivered with the sense of abandonment and isolation. She closed her eyes for a second.

"Kim. Kim are you there?" Wade suddenly shouted at her.

"What?" she mumbled.

"Kim, you have to keep your eyes open. You blacked out. I need you to stay awake, c'mon. Please Kim, she's almost there."

"Huh…?" Kim looked around the room, but saw nothing new other than the door, which was glowing white hot in the center.

 _I guess this is it_ , she thought, not for the first time. "I'm sorry… Shego… I'm sorry…" she whispered, knowing Wade would be recording her last words.

The door gave way in a stunning blast of light and heat, and a half second later, two soldiers dove through the door, followed by several more. As they advanced, their weapons trained on her, Kim sent a silent prayer to a deity she was on the about begging for the end to at least be fast and painless.

Another flash of light blinded her, and she flinched. For a moment, she felt nothing other than the tears falling freely down her cheeks.

She blinked her eyes clear a few moments later in confusion, finding all the guards lying on the ground, and a single figure in black looming menacingly above her. As the figures reached one hand up towards it's head, she recognized the eyes even before the gas mask was pulled down.

"Y… Yori?"

Black overtook her before the ninja could respond, and Kim slumped lifelessly to the ground.

* * *

 **A/N** : Yeahhh, I still love a good ol' cliffhanger ending. My bad!


End file.
